Category Archives: egogooglaholism

My books in the wild and egogooglaholism update

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Here is my friend Jo’s mum’s chair in the garden, with The Blue Handbag resting over one arm and a nice cup of tea in the other. Wouldn’t you like to step into the photo and sit down?

It’s the newest photo from a small batch at my Facebook ‘fan page’ (it still feels a bit embarrasing to have set up a fan page!) of my books in the wild – just to prove to me that they do exist out there.

I’d love you to take a photo of any of my books wherever you are in the world and send them through to me (fiona@fionarobyn.com) and I’ll put them up on Facebook.

Talking of The Blue Handbag, Leonard has done me proud and Catherine has written a very kind review of the book over at Juxtabook. ‘Utterly delightful’, she says. What a lucky writer I am.

The Blogsplash numbers have reached 110 – you can see who’s signed up recently here. It’s also reached its first Hebrew blog – cool! Here’s the latest tweetable blurb if you’re willing to send it out again: 890 Bloggers needed: Blogsplash on 1st March next year. http://bit.ly/JxqFs (a big thank you for any retweets!)

In other news, I’m on day 5 of not looking at Facebook or my Amazon rankings except on Fridays… You know about my egogooglaholism problems, and so I’m feeling (cautiously) quite pleased with myself. Meditating again in the mornings is helping, as is a kinder diet and lots of journalling, but it’s a bit chicken and egg as always. I think my extended time away-from-it-all at Amida helped the most. Being able to find the space and then sit in/with it – that’s the secret for me.

I hope you can find your own spaces today and try not to fill them up again. Happy Wednesday.

My name is Fiona, and I am an egogooglahohic

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It’s that good old cocaine lure of success again.

I’ve been struggling with my addictive egogoogling behaviour for a while, but over the past few weeks it has been getting ridiculous.

Putting my name in Google. Checking my blog counters. Going on Facebook. Checking the Amazon rankings of all my books. Looking on Goodreads to see who’s reading my books. Going on Facebook. Oh – a little bit of writing. Putting my name in Google again.

I think I hit my rock bottom. I’m going to give myself the gift of a whole month free of all of that stuff – no looking at my sales figures, no reading blogs, nothing. I’ll review the situation after that month is over. I’m scared and excited. If you see me on Facebook before July 13th, tell me to get out of there.

Anne Lamott describes this phenomena so well in Bird by Bird that I’ll leave you with her words. Have lovely weekends x

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One more thing about publication: when this book of mine came out, the one that did pretty well, the one that necessitated the buying of a new dress, I found myself stoned on all the attention, and then lost and derailed, needing a new fix every couple of days and otherwise going into withdrawal. My insides became completely uninhabitable, as if I’d wandered into a penny arcade with lots of bells ringing and lights flashing and lots of junk food, and I’d been there too long. I wanted peace, peace and quiet, but at the same time I didn’t want to leave.

I was like one of the bad boys in “Pinocchio” who flock to the island of pleasure and grow donkey ears. I knew my soul was sick and that I needed spiritual advice, and I knew also that this advice shouldn’t be terrible sophisticated. So I went to see the pastor of my son’s preschool.

The pastor is about fifteen. We talked for a while. It turns out he just looks young. I said that I was all over the place, up and down, scattered, high, withdrawing, lost, and in the midst of it all trying to find some elusive sense of serenity.
“The world can’t give that serenity,” he said. “The world can’t give us peace. We can only find it in our hearts.”
“I hate that,” I said.
“I know. But the good news is that by the same token, the world can’t take it away.”